Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, written in 1962 for the dedication of the new Coventry Cathedral, is visualised as an elongated music video by director Derek Jarman. Laurence Olivier, in his last work on film before his death, plays a disabled veteran Second World War soldier whose memories and reflections accompany the highly acclaimed Britten opus. Newsreel footage of the Great War and atomic explosions are intercut with sequences featuring Owen Teale (as the Unknown Soldier) and Tilda Swinton (a battlefield nurse) looking powerlessly on at all the devastation and wasted lives. Jarman's ultimately inspiring, negative statement on war matches the intense emotions of Britten's music to perfection.

During World War I, British soldier Owen is mortified by the examples of cruelty that surround him in the trenches. He combats these terrifying images by maintaining hope in his love for an army nurse. But he also begins to accept his fate as another battlefield sacrifice.